Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. c25.s12.t4.7

c25.s12.t4.7

Pushparatnam,¹ has recently discovered the occurrence of the Tamil-Brāhmī letter *ṉ* in a couple of Sinhala-Brāhmī inscriptions published by Paranavitana (e.g., detail in Fig. 5.8).² He made the discovery in the course of his study of the Tamil loanword *marumakaṉ* occurring in the cave inscriptions of Sri Lanka. While in most cases the loanword is spelt with the dental *n*, the alveolar nasal *ṉ* of Tamil-Brāhmī occurs twice.³ This discovery is important because the expression is shown to be borrowed from Tamil,⁴ and also because the occurrence of *ṉ*, the most characteristic letter of Tamil-Brāhmī, in the Sinhala-Brāhmī inscriptions proves the existence of the Tamil-Brāhmī script from at least the 2nd century B.C., the date to which one of these inscriptions (No. 643) may be assigned on palaeographic evidence.